In a SiriusXM “Town Hall” with Ron Bennington, Jim Gaffigan described how his wife and writing partner, Jeannie, dealt with her recent brain tumor surgery much better than he did.

“She went into a two hour [MRI] before the surgery, and she came out and she was like, “Write this down, write this down.” She had all these bits about it. And so hopefully she’s going to write a book about the whole experience, but yeah, she was totally thinking about bits,” Gaffigan told Bennington.

He, on the other hand, pondered possible retirement.

“You know, there’s nothing you can do about it…but it was, I mean, it was really scary stuff. Everyone in this room, everyone listening, has had that moment in their life where they’re like, ‘Oh, so this is where the whole apple cart gets knocked over.’ And I was living with the reality. I mean, having five young children, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, if Jeannie’s gone, I’m gonna have to put them up for adoption.’ You know, I’m going to probably have to retire, because I don’t want to outsource it, and there’s so many of them, whatever their names are…that it was interesting to have that reality, the perspective on it, because I remember thinking ‘Oh, well, all right, I got to do what I loved, and now it’s possibly over.’ You know, Jeannie is fine but, there was twenty-four hours there where it was, ‘It’s likely not great…'”

Gaffigan also joked with Bennington about how he won a role on FX’s critically-acclaimed Fargo anthology series, only to not have things work out quite as planned.

You can hear all of that, and more as SiriusXM celebrates the album release of Jim Gaffigan: Cinco on Tuesday with the full “Town Hall” session at 8 a.m. Eastern on Comedy Greats (ch. 94), followed by the complete playing of “Cinco.” Both the Town Hall and Cinco will re-air on the station from 8 to 10 p.m. Eastern Tuesday, as well.

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